premiere-libtorrent/docs/dht_store.rst

============================================
BitTorrent extension for arbitrary DHT store
============================================

:Author: Arvid Norberg, arvid@rasterbar.com
:Version: 1.0.0

.. contents:: Table of contents
  :depth: 2
  :backlinks: none

This is a proposal for an extension to the BitTorrent DHT to allow
storing and retrieving of arbitrary data.

It supports both storing *immutable* items, where the key is
the SHA-1 hash of the data itself, and *mutable* items, where
the key is the public key of the key pair used to sign the data.

There are two new proposed messages, ``put`` and ``get``.

terminology
-----------

In this document, a *storage node* refers to the node in the DHT to which
an item is being announced and stored on. A *requesting node* refers to
a node which makes look-ups in the DHT to find the storage nodes, to
request items from them, and possibly re-announce those items to keep them
alive.

messages
--------

The proposed new messages ``get`` and ``put`` are similar to the existing ``get_peers``
and ``announce_peer``.

Responses to ``get`` should always include ``nodes`` and ``nodes6``. Those fields
have the same semantics as in its ``get_peers`` response. It should also include a write token,
``token``, with the same semantics as int ``get_peers``. The write token MAY be tied
specifically to the key which ``get`` requested. i.e. the ``token`` can only be used
to store values under that one key. It may also be tied to the node ID and IP
address of the requesting node.

The ``id`` field in these messages has the same semantics as the standard DHT messages,
i.e. the node ID of the node sending the message, to maintain the structure of the DHT
network.

The ``token`` field also has the same semantics as the standard DHT message ``get_peers``
and ``announce_peer``, when requesting an item and to write an item respectively.

The ``k`` field is the 32 byte curve25519 public key, which the signature
can be authenticated with. When looking up a mutable item, the ``target`` field
MUST be the SHA-1 hash of this key concatenated with the ``salt``, if present.

The distinction between storing mutable and immutable items is the inclusion
of a public key, a sequence number, signature and an optional salt (``k``,
``seq``,  ``sig`` and ``salt``).

``get`` requests for mutable items and immutable items cannot be distinguished from
eachother. An implementation can either store mutable and immutable items in the same
hash table internally, or in separate ones and potentially do two lookups for ``get``
requests.

The ``v`` field is the *value* to be stored. It is allowed to be any bencoded type (list,
dict, string or integer). When it's being hashed (for verifying its signature or to calculate
its key), its flattened, bencoded, form is used. It is important to use the verbatim
bencoded representation as it appeared in the message. decoding and then re-encoding
bencoded structures is not necessarily an identity operation.

Storing nodes MAY reject ``put`` requests where the bencoded form of ``v`` is longer
than 1000 bytes. In other words, it's not safe to assume storing more than
1000 bytes will succeed.

immutable items
---------------

Immutable items are stored under their SHA-1 hash, and since they cannot be modified,
there is no need to authenticate the origin of them. This makes immutable items simple.

A node making a lookup SHOULD verify the data it receives from the network, to verify
that its hash matches the target that was looked up.

put message
...........

Request:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"a":
		{
			"id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>*,
			"v": *<any bencoded type, whose encoded size <= 1000>*
		},
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "q",
		"q": "put"
	}

Response:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"r": { "id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>* },
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "r",
	}

get message
...........

Request:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"a":
		{
			"id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>*,
			"target": *<SHA-1 hash of item (string)>*,
		},
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "q",
		"q": "get"
	}

Response:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
	   "r":
		{
			"id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>*,
			"token": *<write token (string)>*,
			"v": *<any bencoded type whose SHA-1 hash matches 'target'>*,
			"nodes": *<IPv4 nodes close to 'target'>*,
			"nodes6": *<IPv6 nodes close to 'target'>*
		},
		"t": *<transaction-id>*,
		"y": "r",
	}


mutable items
-------------

Mutable items can be updated, without changing their DHT keys. To authenticate
that only the original publisher can update an item, it is signed by a private key
generated by the original publisher. The target ID mutable items are stored under
is the SHA-1 hash of the public key (as it appears in the ``put`` message).

In order to avoid a malicious node to overwrite the list head with an old
version, the sequence number ``seq`` must be monotonically increasing for each update,
and a node hosting the list node MUST not downgrade a list head from a higher sequence
number to a lower one, only upgrade. The sequence number SHOULD not exceed ``MAX_INT64``,
(i.e. ``0x7fffffffffffffff``. A client MAY reject any message with a sequence number
exceeding this. A client MAY also reject any message with a negative sequence number.

The signature is a 64 byte curve25519 signature of the bencoded sequence
number concatenated with the ``v`` key. e.g. something like this::

	3:seqi4e1:v12:Hello world!

If the ``salt`` key is present and non-empty, the salt string must be included
in what's signed. Note that if ``salt`` is specified and an empty string, it
is as if it was not specified and nothing in addition to the sequence number
and the data is signed.

When a salt is included in what is signed, the key ``salt`` with the value
of the key is prepended in its bencoded form. For example, if ``salt`` is
"foobar", the buffer to be signed is::

	4:salt6:foobar3:seqi4e1:v12:Hello world!

put message
...........

Request:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"a":
		{
			"cas": *<optional 20 byte hash (string)>*,
			"id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>*,
			"k": *<curve25519 public key (32 bytes string)>*,
			"salt": *<optional salt to be appended to "k" when hashing (string)>*
			"seq": *<monotonically increasing sequence number (integer)>*,
			"sig": *<curve25519 signature (64 bytes string)>*,
			"token": *<write-token (string)>*,
			"v": *<any bencoded type, whose encoded size < 1000>*
		},
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "q",
		"q": "put"
	}

Storing nodes receiving a ``put`` request where ``seq`` is lower than or equal
to what's already stored on the node, MUST reject the request. If the sequence
number is equal, and the value is also the same, the node SHOULD reset its timeout
counter.

If the sequence number in the ``put`` message is lower than the sequence number
associated with the currently stored value, the storing node MAY return an error
message with code 302 (see error codes below).

Note that this request does not contain a target hash. The target hash under
which this blob is stored is implied by the ``k`` argument. The key is
the SHA-1 hash of the key (``k``).

In order to support a single key being used to store separate items in the DHT,
an optional ``salt`` can be specified in the ``put`` request of mutable
items. If the salt entry is not present, it can be assumed to be an empty
string, and its semantics should be identical as specifying a salt key
with an empty string. The salt can be any binary string (but probably most
conveniently a hash of something). This string is appended to the key,
as specified in the ``k`` field, when calculating the key to store the
blob under (i.e. the key ``get`` requests specify to retrieve this data).

This lets a single entity, with a single key, publish any number of unrelated
items, with a single key that readers can verify. This is useful if the
publisher doesn't know ahead of time how many different items are to be
published. It can distribute a single public key for users to authenticate
the published blobs.

The ``cas`` field is optional. If present it is interpreted as the sha-1 hash of
the sequence number, ``v`` field and possibly the ``salt`` field, that is
expected to be replaced. The buffer to hash is the same as the one signed when
storing. ``cas`` is short for *compare and swap*, it has similar semantics as
CAS CPU instructions. If specified as part of the put command, and the current
value stored under the public key differs from the expected value, the store
fails. The ``cas`` field only applies to mutable puts. If there is no current
value, the ``cas`` field SHOULD be ignored. A put operation should not be
prevented based on the ``cas`` field if no value is currently present.

Response:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"r": { "id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>* },
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "r",
	}

If the store fails for any reason an error message is returned instead of the message
template above, i.e. one where "y" is "e" and "e" is a tuple of [error-code, message]).
Failures include where the ``cas`` hash mismatches and the sequence number is outdated.

If no ``cas`` field is included in the ``put`` message, the value of the current ``v``
field should be disregarded when determining whether or not to save the item.
(However, the signature, sequence number obviously still should).

The error message (as specified by BEP5_) looks like this:

.. _BEP5: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"e": [ *<error-code (integer)>*, *<error-string (string)>* ],
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "e",
	}

In addition to the error codes defined in BEP5_, this specification defines 
some additional error codes.

+------------+-----------------------------+
| error-code | description                 |
+============+=============================+
| 205        | message (i.e. ``v`` field)  |
|            | too big.                    |
+------------+-----------------------------+
| 206        | invalid signature           |
+------------+-----------------------------+
| 301        | the CAS hash mismatched,    |
|            | re-read value and try       |
|            | again.                      |
+------------+-----------------------------+
| 302        | sequence number less than   |
|            | current.                    |
+------------+-----------------------------+

An implementation MUST emit 301 errors if the cas-hash mismatches. This is
a critical feature in synchronization of multiple agents sharing an immutable item.

get message
...........

Request:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"a":
		{
			"id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>*,
			"target:" *<20 byte SHA-1 hash of public key and salt (string)>*
		},
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "q",
		"q": "get"
	}

Response:

.. parsed-literal::

	{
		"r":
		{
			"id": *<20 byte id of sending node (string)>*,
			"k": *<curve25519 public key (32 bytes string)>*,
			"nodes": *<IPv4 nodes close to 'target'>*,
			"nodes6": *<IPv6 nodes close to 'target'>*,
			"salt": *<optional salt to be appended to "k" when hashing (string)>*
			"seq": *<monotonically increasing sequence number (integer)>*,
			"sig": *<curve25519 signature (64 bytes string)>*,
			"token": *<write-token (string)>*,
			"v": *<any bencoded type, whose encoded size <= 1000>*
		},
		"t": *<transaction-id (string)>*,
		"y": "r",
	}

signature verification
----------------------

In order to make it maximally difficult to attack the bencoding parser, signing and verification of the
value and sequence number should be done as follows:

1. encode value and sequence number separately
2. concatenate ("4:salt" *length-of-salt* ":" *salt*) "3:seqi" *seq*
   "e1:v" *len* ":" and the encoded value.
   sequence number 1 of value "Hello World!" would be converted to: "3:seqi1e1:v12:Hello World!"
   In this way it is not possible to convince a node that part of the length is actually part of the
   sequence number even if the parser contains certain bugs. Furthermore it is not possible to have a
   verification failure if a bencoding serializer alters the order of entries in the dictionary.
   The salt is in parenthesis because it is optional. It is only prepended if
   a non-empty salt is specified in the ``put`` request.
3. sign or verify the concatenated string

On the storage node, the signature MUST be verified before accepting the store command. The data
MUST be stored under the SHA-1 hash of the public key (as it appears in the bencoded dict).

On the requesting nodes, the key they get back from a ``get`` request MUST be verified to hash
to the target ID the lookup was made for, as well as verifying the signature. If any of these fail,
the response SHOULD be considered invalid.

expiration
----------

Without re-announcement, these items MAY expire in 2 hours. In order
to keep items alive, they SHOULD be re-announced once an hour.

Any node that's interested in keeping a blob in the DHT alive may announce it. It would simply
repeat the signature for a mutable put without having the private key.

test vector
-----------

The buffer being signed::

	3:seqi1e1:v12:Hello World!

public key::

	77ff84905a91936367c01360803104f92432fcd904a43511876df5cdf3e7e548

private key::

	e06d3183d14159228433ed599221b80bd0a5ce8352e4bdf0262f76786ef1c74d
	b7e7a9fea2c0eb269d61e3b38e450a22e754941ac78479d6c54e1faf6037881d

signature::

	305ac8aeb6c9c151fa120f120ea2cfb923564e11552d06a5d856091e5e853cff
	1260d3f39e4999684aa92eb73ffd136e6f4f3ecbfda0ce53a1608ecd7ae21f01

resources
---------

Libraries that implement curve25519 DSA:

* NaCl_
* libsodium_
* `nightcracker's ed25519`_

.. _NaCl: http://nacl.cr.yp.to/
.. _libsodium: https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium
.. _`nightcracker's ed25519`: https://github.com/nightcracker/ed25519